The World Beneath Us

Ramona's life is in turmoil, as she's in an abusive relationship with a man who's obviously only after her family's money. But when she gets a new and odd neighbor, everything begins to change...

Before I met him, I think that life used to be a lot simpler. 

I went out with friends and would drink with them. I went shopping for clothes on occasion and laughed more freely. I would go out to buy my own groceries and eat the foods that I actually wanted to eat. But all of that completely changed when I met him.

Him. Also known as Markus Kinsington. Also known as my boyfriend. And also known as a golddigger.

I come from a wealthy family. Our company, Syleman Incorporated, is a large investing group that turns local businesses into bursting profit hubs. We're famous for our ability to transform places and businesses so quickly and so efficiently. And with all of that popularity comes quite a lot of cash. 

So I suppose that I was bound to have someone after my family. Or rather, me. And that person who was after me in particular happened to be Markus. I just simply didn't know it.

When I met him, I considered him a boyfriend who would simply be a fun time to be around. But when he persuaded me to move in with him after only five months of dating, I knew that I had gone terribly wrong.

You never suspect them. The ones that are nice to you so often, that never once snap at you and do whatever you want. And when it turns out how crooked and awful that person is, you can hardly believe it. "But how?" you wonder. "But when" is what you really need to be thinking about.

When, when did they start acting like that? When, when did they decide to? When, when did they even want to manipulate you like that?

When?

And why...?

~~~

My eyes fluttered shut in the cool morning air, my eyelashes falling down along with them. The breeze of the increasingly chillier wind caused my disobedient hair to fly around my face without order. And I'd worked so hard to straighten it today...

I sighed, letting my breath slip through my lips without any hitch. I wanted to be at least somewhat calm today. Before he showed up. Before I got... hit.

All around me, as I listened to my surroundings, I could hear the leaves rustling and the few birds chirping. The flutter of their tiny wings. The sounds of the Callison River not far away from here. Here, in the middle of the forest, with a small road leading up here. 

We don't precisely have neighbors, except for that old run-down looking house next door. But nobody had lived there in years. Except... I swore that earlier when I was outside checking the weather I saw a SOLD sign in front of it...

But none of that mattered right now. All that mattered was one word: Calm. I wanted to be peaceful. Structured. Stabilized, at least somewhat. 

I think I should've known that that wasn't going to happen.

His footsteps were all too familiar to me now: thundering, crashing and loud. Those boots of his certainly added to the ominous affect. Not to mention how old the house was, which made the wood creak even more often.

He was here before I could even breathe again. I kept my eyes squeezed shut, my muscles immediately seizing up. Maybe, just maybe, if I keep totally still he will leave me alone...

But of course, that was merely a fantasy. As if he would do anything as ridiculous as that.

His footsteps slowed after he opened the screen door outside, shutting it with a slight thud. My eyes very nearly flew open when I noticed that, but I kept them shut with a kind of determination. That's what Listening was to me. You keep something going until you can't possibly do it anymore.

And then I felt it: those large, calloused hands of his spreading across the small of my back. They brushed my shoulders with an odd shiver, making me cringe. I kept my eyes closed.

Then suddenly, I heard the familiar noise that the chair made when you sat down in it too fast. I don't really know what it was called, but I just knew that I didn't like it. He had sat down instead of touching my back any more. At that thought, I was slightly relieved, but also terrified at what could possibly be coming next. 

"Ramona." I cringed and flinched at his voice. It repulsed me to my core. It was too normal, too rough for someone of his personality. Of who he actually was. 

"Don't you know exactly where your eyes should be right now?"

I held back a disappointed groan, biting my lip as I wrenched my eyes open. The sun was right in my eyes too, which nearly blinded me. Why was the world so unnecessarily bright? 

But I knew what he wanted. What I had to do. I hesitantly locked eyes with his, and I swore I saw his lips smirk very slightly when I did. He got what he wanted.

I kept my face blank. Just like he wanted. Without emotion, without thought. Kind of like a doll, I supposed. "I should be looking at you, dear. I'm very sorry. It will never happen again." The phrase was like instinct now. It sounded so fake.

The smirk on his face grew much wider. "Good job, Ramona. You did well. Just make sure," his face turned so coy it made me want to scream, "it doesn't happen again~."

The chair squeaked when he left it, those pounding footsteps of his growing quieter and quieter, signaling that he was leaving. I released the breath that I didn't realize I'd been holding, the air slipping away.

Well. I supposed that I should be fixing things up for him. Cleaning and cooking for him. Doing everything for him. 

"Him."

Markus.

~~~

When I woke from my dreams the next morning, I had to unplaster my eyelids from my cheeks. I'd been crying in the night. I sat up slowly, my comforter slipping off the side of the bed as I rubbed my eyes. Looking around me, I saw that the sun was practically flying into the room. Someone had left the curtains open.

I stumbled off the bed and made my way to the kitchen, nearly falling down the steps in the process. I had not slept well at all. The way that my hair stuck to my face and was completely knotted told me that. 

The kitchen was bathed in sunlight. Too bright for my eyes. Sighing, I strolled over to the several windows there and pulled the curtains back. The room was dim and dull once more. Just how I liked it. Or rather, how I deserved it.

The sun is bright, colorful. It is freedom. I'm not free. I am not flying away, like a bird. I am stuck here.

I don't deserve the sun.

Maybe the sun was Markus' way of tormenting me. And if it was, it was working. When all the curtains were closed, I settled into my routine once more: coffee, breakfast, cleaning. The only thing I really felt like I did nowadays was cook and clean for him anyways. My hands went into their regular motions as I opened up the package of ground coffee and pulled out the creamer.

Until... the beeping began.

It was when I was sipping my coffee at the dining table that I heard it. It was a high-pitched, annoying sound, and it made me want to throw my mug on the floor. It sounded oddly familiar though. I couldn't quite place it, probably since I'd been here so long I could hardly identify anything normal anymore.

This continued on for hours. While I was cleaning the bathroom, while I was planning dinner recipes, while I was taking a break at 3 o'clock. It just kept going. By then, I was about to bust out a window, it was so irritating. I had no idea why it made me so agitated. It just did.

That was when I mustered up the courage to go look for the cause of the beeping.

It was a smoldering day today at 3, even though the world was transitioning into fall and getting progressively cooler. I could already feel the sweat starting to bead at my neck when I started up the path. All around me were endless piles of trees and foliage, nearly drowning me in all the nature. I felt like I was choking as I walked.

The road leading up to our house was long and winding, which made it difficult for people to just drive on up. And looking back at it, through the trees, made you wonder why we even had such a path if we were so loaded.

Our house was huge. And no, it wasn't like one of those enormous fancy mansions you see on TV. It was a huge log cabin, that came with two balconies and two porches. Two bathrooms, one wine cellar, and three bedrooms.

So yes. I guess that you could tell us off for the road. If we had such a big house, then what was the point of having such a bad way to get up here?

Markus was the one who insisted on it. He thought that, no, he knew that I would be less likely to escape if the road was so terrible. Not to mention the awful amount of trees surrounding the place.

I couldn't leave even I wanted to.

I crushed several fallen leaves on my way to the main road, the gravel beneath me crunching with my weight. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I reached my destination, pulling myself over some particularly large rocks on the end of the lane. And then I knew exactly where the beeping was coming from:

A moving truck, right smack in front of the road to our house.

And behind it, the old house nobody had lived in for years, with a large SOLD sign in front of it.

~~~

I gasped immediately, fighting the urge to skedaddle right back home. But something froze me in my spot. Someone was finally going to be here. Someone was finally moving in across from our house. I wonder if they had already tried coming down to our house today?

The moving truck was beeping incredibly loud for seemingly no reason, two red flashing lights going off as it backed up into the house's driveway. The house was still exactly like I remembered it, even though I hadn't been up there in quite some time. Several months, I think.

It was a large colonial home, completely opposite of our log cabin. One balcony out on front, a small porch that even came with a swing. A large backyard, a patio. It was probably only half the size of my current house. Air left my lungs before I could even blink. I was going to have a neighbor. Was I actually going to have... a friend?

Before I could tell those silly fantasies off, I saw the screen door on the house blast open without warning. I flinched when I saw who was coming out:

My new neighbor, I assumed. Blonde hair, tall and slender. He was wearing a beanie, covering his head, (in summer?) so I couldn't really get a good look at his face. But one thing that I could see was a pair of unrimmed glasses that had slipped down to the edge of his nose, and he made no effort to pull them back up.

I questioned myself then, wondering if Markus would even want me to befriend a strange man across the street. But then again... did I even have to listen to him?

Oh wait, of course I did. What was I thinking?

Just then, I felt incredibly uncomfortable by something. Eyes that were watching me. I knew the feeling well. My eyes flew upwards, wondering furiously who it was.

The neighbor was staring at me.

Those eyes of his bored into mine, emerald and bright with something I didn't know. They seemed to be surveying my very soul.

My entire body shivered as my face flushed from humiliation. What kind of person watches their neighbor oddly from the woods without a single word? My feet slipped behind me, as if I was already trying to run away, just in the wrong direction. 

A rush of hot air filled my lungs as I sprinted back to my house, gasping for breath. That was so embarrassing. The first time I even saw someone else in months, and I had been caught watching them like a creepy stalker. That made my legs run even faster, my breaths coming shallow and hard as I bolted back up the difficult terrain.

Stupid road.

~~~

By the time I had run all the way back home, I was so exhausted that I slumped down the side of the front door. It made me wonder if I should get out more often, but I knew that that would make Markus angry.

I attempted to catch my breath then, rubbing my sore feet. I started to hate that road with a burning passion. We should really fix it...

I pulled myself off the floor, huffing as I stumbled over to the couch. I sighed heavily, glad to be away from that. My face red, I gripped the edge of the couch for support. I seriously needed to sit down for a bit after running practically a mile back up here. My fingers slipped over the thermostat in the living room, setting it down to only 65 degrees.

My eyes fluttered as I recalled the embarrassment that had just occurred. I hoped that I wouldn't see that neighbor again. Taking a deep breath, I prepared to get some dinner ready when the doorbell rang.

It couldn't possibly be Markus. Unless he decided to come home early? But that wouldn't be the case. He wouldn't come home for no reason. But there were also some other options as to who it could be. Kendall, the gardener for my courtyard in the back? Or if Markus ordered something...

I sighed once more, agitated. Walking over to the door, I opened it slowly and cautiously, as if I was afraid of what might be there.

I was afraid for good reason, because low and behold the person standing there was my neighbor. Without a beanie, with quite possibly the most amazing hairstyle I'd ever seen, and those glasses still on the edge of his nose.

Those incredibly green and bright eyes of his still stared right into me. I wondered for a second if he was wearing contacts (because how could those eyes possibly be natural??) And then he spoke.

His voice was soft, calculated. Not scratchy or rough like Markus's. It was kind of... lovely, I realized. But his voice made every muscle in my body freeze in it's spot. I wasn't expecting this at all. I seriously thought that I'd never have to even look at him again. But here he was, speaking in that voice and looking through my very being.

"Hey."

It was a simple hello. I willed myself to act normal and give a slight nod in acknowledgement. I could feel the familiar feeling of sweat falling down my neck already. I made myself speak, too.

"Hello." I nearly choked on one word. It made me concerned about whether or not I'd even be able to carry out an entire conversation. I was able to talk to Markus a lot more easily, and he was the guy I was stuck here with. The guy who was hurting me.

The guy who was essentially imprisoning me here.

My eyes watered slightly as the stranger scratched at the back of his neck. This was awkward. But the stranger spoke once more, breaking through the moment of silence we had just shared.

Let me say something about his hair first, though.

With that beanie off of him, the one that he was wearing before in this awful weather, he looked like some sort of Greek god. I'm not kidding. Up close, I could see that he was probably about 6' 1", which was literally 5 inches taller than me. I kicked myself a lot for being shorter than Markus, but with someone even taller than Markus I wanted to kick myself even harder. There was no chance of me growing any more, but one had to hope...

His hair came down to the nape of his neck, falling down in completely mismanaged wisps of gold. The color of it wasn't an obnoxious yellow color, but natural and like he'd just bathed in sunshine. Of freedom.

And the star of the show, of course... was the baby pink hair of his that seemed to be quite literally sprouting out the top of his head.

No, I am not kidding. He was blonde all around his head except for a few large tufts of baby pink.

So yes, he looked like a Greek god. And maybe a little bit of an odd one, at that. One with pink and blonde hair. 

I stood there gaping at his hairstyle for about three full seconds without stopping until I realized how messed up I probably looked while doing that. I felt strangely sub-par to this guy.

"Might I ask what your name is? I came by to say hello." Oh, God. He came all this way, down that terrible road just to say hi to the random stranger in the woods? Which happened to be me?

I stared at the ground long and hard before I remembered that I was in a human verbal conversation. "Um... my name is Ramona. Ramona Syleman." 

My voice came out broken and shaky, and I felt my face flushing. But the stranger didn't seem to notice it. "Hi there, Ramona. My name is Liam Milsken. Pleased to meet you." 

He was so polite and formal while I was like some country hick. God, this was a weird situation I was in. Or at least I felt like it. The stranger, no, Liam, gave me a small smile. And before I knew it, he was excusing himself with a mumble and strutting off down the god-awful road again. His tufts of pink hair seeming to bounce off his back as he went along.

Jesus, what had just happened?

~~~

"Did you meet the new neighbors, hon?"

I was startled out of my reverie later that day, as Markus and I were settled down at the dinner table. "Um... yes." I managed to stutter out. I could almost hear his eyes narrowing as he observed me.

"Oh really? What were they like?" His voice sounded so coy all of a sudden. He probably thought that I was hiding something. I wanted to sigh at that, though. I so wasn't.

"There was actually only one person, dear. A man named Liam." Markus's eyebrows hitched upwards at that. Obviously that had piqued his interest. He didn't say anything about it, though, and began running his hands through his tousled midnight hair. 

I continued. I knew he would ask more if I just stopped. "He's fine. Looks like an okay dude."

I said the lie with no emotion. It was a lie, because I thought that Liam looked like a really interesting person to hang out with, but what would I know? I was the person who was in the middle of nowhere in a log cabin with her so-called boyfriend. My eyes drifted to the plate of food I'd prepared with no real appetite. Nothing even tasted right nowadays. 

"Huh" was the only real response that Markus offered. After that, he dumped his plate in the sink for me to clean and headed to the living room without another word. It was normal like this. He usually didn't talk much to me anyways, unless he was angry about something.

I sighed, exhausted from the weight of the world. My eyes drifted from the dim lighting in the kitchen to the window back door leading to the garden. My garden. My solace. It was too dark out to really go into now, but I pushed myself off my seat to go look out there anyways.

I flipped the light switch next to the door, sliding it open just as the light flickered on. And then I saw it. My creation. (With the help of a particular gardener named Kendall) Rows and rows of well-preserved lilies and daffodils and tulips rose into the air. Several rosebushes and rhododendrons were busy growing around the side of the stone fountain, which you could easily walk up to using the brick path all around the garden. In the mornings, I would occasionally go out for a stroll here, to soak in the scent of my flowers and to feel the sun. To feel what meant to me freedom.

I was so lost in the view of my garden I didn't even hear the familiar footsteps falling in place behind me. But what I did feel was the brush of two rough hands around my shoulders, gentle at first. But as I kept staring, still as a statue with surprise, those hands began to tighten around my shoulders. Soon their nails dug into my skin, and the pressure made me flinch with the pain. 

I had made him angry. Something made my eyes water as he spoke. "You know where you're supposed to be, don't you...?"

I cringed, but his nails just kept slicing into my skin. I could feel blood beginning to trickle down the sleeves of my sweatshirt, but I knew that I couldn't move. I couldn't, because that would make him angrier. So with only one word, I gave him the answer he truly desired:

"Yes."

Author's Note

Hi there. My name is Elana, and I'm the person who made this. To give you a bit of background on this story, though:

I started writing it mostly because I got bored. But then I started making up some ideas, you see. And before long, I was busy planning and writing it. Right now, as I type this, it is Thanksgiving/Fall Break and I'm hanging around at my dad's house. I'll try to upload the next chapter (once I get some wifi lol, cuz right now ive been doing all this on my Chromebook without any friggin internet) in the next few days.

Also I'm like seriously proud of my work here. I didn't think that I'd be able to write this very well but low and behold I spent like 7 hours doing this. It took so long because in fifth grade I had this teacher named Mrs. Peterson who instilled it very much in my mind that every writer should always choose incredible words instead of ordinary ones.

So here I am. I wrote incredible words instead of ordinary ones. Hahahahahaaha
If you like this please review it or somethin. Thanks!

Reviews

[alanwgraham]

Well done for this Elana. You have written some great words here and they fit together well. This is an age old story where a young woman is tricked by a manipulative man and comes under his control. I wonder whether her family might have picked this up at some point. You have left the reader wanting to know what comes next. I suppose the challenge is to find a new twist on and old scenario. I will not give a detailed crit but I do put a lot of effort myself (I guess all serious writers do!) into reading over and over my writing for the boring things like sentence construction, grammar repetition (I spotted one sentence that starts and finishes in 'here'. And I'm pleased when a reader points something out.
If you feel up to it read one of my stories and let me know what you think.
All the best and well done,
Alan

[JayG]

I wasn’t sure of how you’d take this, but your bio said you want to write beautiful stories. And since that’s a problem, I thought you’d want to know.

I know that sounds a bit silly, but think about it. Most people make a decision to commit to reading a given story in three pages of less. And what can have happened in that time, so far as story—especially making the reader think it's beautiful? We’re talking about less than 1000 words. So why will readers buy a given story knowing so little: Beautiful writing.

The writing is what MAKES them turn from page one to page two, and to… As Sol Stein put it, “A novel is like a car—it won’t go anywhere until you turn on the engine. The “engine” of both fiction and nonfiction is the point at which the reader makes the decision not to put the book down. The engine should start in the first three pages, the closer to the top of page one the better.”

My point is that it makes no matter how good the story is if no one reads it. So before anything else, getting the reader to say, “Hmmm…tell me more,” is job #1. And something that no one tells us in our school days is critically relevant to that.

Think back to those days. You spent most of your writing time on assignments for reports and essays. Right? Your lessons on structure of writing were on that of a report. Did even one teacher explain why a scene on the page and one in theater are so dramatically different? How about tags? Did they talk about using leading, trailing, and mid-line tags? How about the three things a reader heeds clarified quickly on entering any scene? Perhaps they mentioned why a scene ends in disaster for the protagonist? How much time was spent on the things I mentioned, total? For most people, it's zero.

Why? Because they were training you in skills employers find useful, not the techniques unique to the profession of Fiction-Writing. The entire purpose of public education is to ready us for employment that will make us self-sufficient adults, remember. All professions, and ours is a profession, are learned IN ADDITION to our schooldays skills. So though we don't realize it, we leave our schooldays exactly as qualified to remove an appendix as to write a novel. Luckily for our friends, we don't try our hand at amateur surgery.

So there you are, just like everyone else who turns to writing fiction, lacking the knowledge the pros take for granted, and facing the problem that, as Mark Twain put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

So you’re working hard, but without knowing it, using the wrong tool-set. And that’s fixable—or can be if you know you suffer from it—which you now do. So while this is bad news, it’s also good news, because you can’t fix the problem you don’t recognize as being one.

At the moment, as you’ve been taught, you’re giving the reader facts, dispassionately presented by an external narrator, someone not on the scene. Yes, you’re using first person pronouns, but that’s not first person narrator as fiction-writers view that. It’s just the author wearing a wig and makeup, pretending to have once experienced the events they’re talking about. But first, second, or third person, the narrator and the protagonist live at different times and cannot-appear-on-stage-together.

The tricks of writing fiction is knowing how to take that into account, to make the reader feel as if they’re living the events in real-time, second-by-second, instead of simply hearing about them second-hand. The tricks of fiction show us how to immerse the reader so deeply into the protagonist’s life that when something bad happens they’re moved to say, “Oh no! What do we do now?”

Without those skills we might include a line like, “My eyes fluttered shut in the cool morning air, my eyelashes falling down along with them.” You literally told the reader that eyelashes are attached to eyelids, and move with them, as if that reader doesn't know? Yes, you’re trying to set a mood, and for you, who know the situation, it works. For a reader? No.

So you want to write. That’s great. And you’ve demonstrated that you have the desire and the perseverance, which is also necessary. And through no fault of your own you’re missing some critical skills. Put them together and the solution is simple: Add the missing skills. Do a bit of research onto the nuts and bolts issues of what makes writing beautiful to a reader and start using them.

I won’t kid you. Easy and simple aren’t interchangeable words. And in the end, you are learning the skills of a profession, which takes time and study. But that’s true of pretty much any skill-set. So it’s not a big deal. And if you are meant to write the study will be like going backstage at the theater for the first time. If not? Well, you’ve learned something important. So it’s win/win. And that’s good. Right?

The local library’s fiction writing section is filled with books on technique. My personal recommendation is that you pick up a personal copy of Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It’s a warm easy read—like sitting with Deb and talking about writing. Read it slowly, with time to think about each new point, and practice the point so you don’t read it, nod, and forget you read it a day later.

Then, six months later, after you’ve been practicing those skills, try Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It’s the best I’ve found, but it is a university-level book and perhaps not a best first-book for you.

But whatever you decide, in the end, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/

[Ensembler]

jEsUS tHaT's a lOt oF wRiTiNg
but at the same time it just makes me want to stop altogether. logic in my story is weird, i know--but that's the point of it.the goal of this story im writing is to make people actually THINK about what is happening, not just skim through it. the point of it is to make things confusing in the first place, so that people will go back through and read it again. it's silly, but it's my experiment.

ugh maybe i should just throw all my outlines in the trash. i was having doubts anyway

[JayG]

The reader go back and go through it again to try to make it make sense? Seriously? If you find a story confusing, do you read to the end, then reread? Or do you turn to something that makes sense as-it's-read.

An acquiring editor, agent, or reader in the bookstore finds themself confused, lectured to, or bored for one single paragraph while they're deciding if they want to commit to reading a story, they stop reading and the audition is over. In fact, the vast majority of what's submitted to the publishing industry is rejected before the end of page one.

• but at the same time it just makes me want to stop altogether

Why? Surely you didn't think that somehow, knowing no more about how to write fiction than everyone who want through your school-system you, magically have the ability to write with more skill than all of them?

ANY skill must be learned. We didn't leave our grade-school ready to write film scrips on a professional level, design bridges, OR successfully write fiction. All professions are learned in addition to our schooldays skills. And though the pros make it seem easy, and almost intuitive, writing fiction is a profession.

If you want to write for sites like this, have at it. Anything you care to write and post is fine.

If your goal is to keep readers turning pages, you need to take something into account: You, and everyone you know, have been choosing professionally written and edited fiction since you learned to read. And while you don't recognize the various tricks writers use to hold your interest and stimulate your emotions, you do respond to them—and expect to see the result of using them in the stories you read. So if you use none of those tricks in shaping your stories, and present something that a publisher or agent would call amateur writing (what they label 97% of what they get as submissions). What's the odds that the reader will say, "Wow, this is great," as against, "What in the hell is this?"

But keep in mind I wasn't trying to talk you out of writing with that critique. You worked hard on that piece and it shows. And, you were being held back by a situation you weren't aware of. I figured that you'd want to know, so you could fix the problem, not throw up your hands in defeat.

“It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.”
~ Sinclair Lewis

A critique hurts. I know because I've been there. For all practical purposes I just called a favorite child ugly. But in reality, I just commented on that story, as it was at that moment, not on your talent and potential as a writer, or the story's plot.

And it might be that you don't want to do all that work. Better to learn that BEFORE you spend endless nights at the keyboard hardening bad fiction-writing habits into concrete, right?

[Ensembler]

I thought about all the things I could do to improve this: I sent it to my mom (a seasoned book reader) my old LA teacher, sent it to some select friends for critiques. It's difficult for me to even find someone to give a real critique, because it seems that nobody really wants to. I haven't been writing this long, I know that. It's not really all that great--in the beginning 2 chapters I was doing it just for fun.

In school, really, I was always the teacher's pet. I was always the one who got the A on the paper, always the one who wrote the best example of a word in a sentence. But it wasn't for a second that I thought I made anything actually worth something. That's because there will always, always be people better than you. People who know what they're doing, those who can do it about a million times better than you could have ever hoped. And a while back I decided that I wanted to be that person. Probably not just the person that everyone hated because all the teachers loved... lol.

I'd already been thinking about the first two chapters a while before you commented in the first place. They don't get the setting well, some phrases don't make sense, and they could be longer. When I wrote those a while back I didn't have any idea what I was really doing. I had no idea where any of this was going, how any of it would turn out. But now that I'm on the sixth one and have become a better writer, who is able to think in the mindset of my characters, those chapters are actually good.

At the same time that this is happening, I strangely feel that my writing is too immature. That even authors who make children's books or ones for pre-teens are always going to be better. That is my motivation. It is because of that that I feel the need to write MORE descriptions, MORE actions, until it seems too much.

Maybe my motivation, in the end, is what makes me think the last ones I've written are okay. I don't feel entitled to think that I would be better than all those incredible authors out there--people like Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde and Rebecca Musser. Those people who make an inspiring story that's able to become a classic or a favorite of someone. There's people out there who are BETTER, more EFFICIENT in the end. I'm really not that. I'm more like a... slow turtle waddling on the road about to get run over by an F-150.

The reason I wanted to write this mainly lies in the fact that I went through those things that my OC did. Not the whole abuse thing, but knowing what pure desperation and loneliness and terror feels like. I know what it is, what it does to you.

I want to express it. I just don't really have the necessary skills.

And maybe, in the end, I'll just scrap everything and try to find something else in life that makes me feel good about things. But that's okay. It's fine, because at least I tried. At least I spent hours upon hours planning and skipping meals to draw up outlines and character development sheets. It's okay.

I'll try.

[JayG]

• I want to express it. I just don't really have the necessary skills.

And? Seems to me that the solution is obvious. How do we become proficient at ANYTHING? We could fumble around and hope that luck will do the job. e could ask people who are unsuccessful in the field how to be successful, or...we could get off our asses and do what needs to be done.

I'm not a great writer, and I don't have a noteworthy talent. So if I can learn enough to convince some publishers to say yes and offer a contract, ANYONE can.